Ginning one bale at a time about every three minutes between sunrise and sunset, the cavernous gin began churning out 480-pound bales of the white and durable fluffy fiber.

Whether a bumper crop or paltry yield, the talk among farmers and ranchers is pretty much the same. It drifts to the weather and prospects of rain.

Midland rancher Hoot Leonard, 88, sitting at the co-op's coffee table, recalled asking former a Stanton banker when another rain was in store.

"When it gets ready," replied Jim Tom.

The Schumann brothers, Andy and Jody, both products of the 1950s drought -- along with Leonard -- also can speak of the prospects of rain in this drought-prone land visited by occasional downpours and spotted rain showers.

"I can tell you when it is going to rain," Jody, 58, said. "It is going to rain as soon as this little dry spell is over."

Humor serves well those whose livelihood is in the land and in timely and generous rain clouds.

For West Texas dryland farmers, 2012 is not a bumper crop, despite a phenomenal rainy September. The almost 6 inches that fell in September came way too late to benefit most dryland farmers.

There was "very little" dryland cotton in Midland and its environs, said Andy, 52.

But what little there was to harvest fared reasonably well, though cotton prices are down from last year.

"Most of the dryland (cotton) has failed out," said Debbie Calloway, the co-op's general manager. "It is not good," because most dryland farmers lost their cotton crop.

Some dryland cotton grown in the Greenwood area and north of Midland around Grady fared well because of the happenstance of spotted rains.

Irrigated fields, such as those of Roy Graham, have fared well historically, especially when supplemented by rain.

Calloway estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 bales will be ginned in 2012, which is a little more than last year's yield -- about 2,900 bales. But the price in 2011 was up to $1.50 per pound, whereas this year the price has dropped to a woefully low 66 cents or 68 cents per pound.

This year's poor yield compares to the 2007 cotton crop that was bolstered by timely and generous rains of more than 21 inches -- well above Midland's normal rainfall of almost 15 inches. That year the co-op ginned 17,000 bales.

At the co-op on Fairgrounds Road are columns of more than 100 modules, each representing about 12 ginned bales about the size of a railroad box car. They await gin superintendent Raul Magallanes' command to move them in for ginning, one load at a time.

"It wasn't a good year by any stretch of the imagination," said 49-year-old Jon Baumann, a farmer who has leased his acreage.

"If you are in the right area and got (cotton) planted at the right time, you will make a little bit (on dryland)," Baumann said, referring to the acreage of Midland farmer Nolan Howard, 29, and Lenorah-area farmer Ronnie Deatherage, 68.

"I have lived out here long enough to know you take God's blessings when you get them and just go on," Baumann said. "You just plan ahead."

Deatherage took a gamble this year and won.

"We had to take a zero last year, because we didn't have anything," he said.

This year, while a "lot of farmers "took (crop) insurance" instead of harvesting, Deatherage said he went "ahead and stripped everything and hoped for the best." He said the occasional showers were "enough to get the cotton up" and harvested.

Howard, who does "not have a single stitch of irrigated cotton," said he was blessed with occasional showers that caused his dryland crops to bloom, blossom and mature.

"I rolled the dice and went ahead and harvested my cotton instead of shredding," he said.

In early October, his crop was the first 2012 cotton hauled to the Midland gin.

"All you can do now is finish out the year and start planning for next year," Howard said.